Jared Fogle was a student at Indiana University who worked at an adult video store in order to pay his way through college. He sat long hours in a class room, sat long hours behind the counter at the video store while eating snacks, and as a result ended up weighing 425 pounds. Needless to say his weight and health situation had become critical. Jared wanted to find a way to lose weight.
He tried various diets, but they didn’t work because he still had all those hours behind a counter during which to cheat. One day he noticed a Subway sandwich store about a mile and a half from his apartment. Without knowing it he was inventing the Subway diet. Jared decided to skip breakfast every day, walk the mile and a half there and back to Subway for both lunch and dinner during which he consumed only a sandwich, a bag of baked chips and a diet soft drink. His caloric intake plummeted from about 10,000 calories each day to only 900, with 6 miles of walking added for good measure. The result of Jared’s personal Subway diet was a loss of 245 pounds in only a year.
How did this Subway diet become a national ad campaign for the Subway chain? One day Jared bumped into a buddy who was a reporter for the school paper. This buddy barely recognized Jared, so he decided to write an article about his amazing weight loss. Someone at Men’s Health magazine read about Jared and decided to include his diet in a feature about crazy diets that work.
A local Chicago Subway owner read the Men’s Health article, brought the diet to the attention of his advertising people who contacted Jared to verify the story. They took the ad idea to Subway’s national ad agency who disliked the idea, so they created a local campaign for Chicago featuring the Subway diet.
Needless to say the Subway diet became a huge hit. Suddenly Jared and his Subway diet were everywhere – in newspapers, on television, even on Oprah. Subway’s national ad people contacted the Chicago ad people about airing the ad nationally.
Many people have had success with the Subway diet. But keep in mind that Jared’s extreme program of calorie cutting and extreme weight loss are, in general, potentially dangerous. A little more moderation is needed, but exercise and cutting calories are a proven one two punch combination in the fight against obesity.
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